Tag Archives: Bob Smith

Welcome 60! (Farewell Gremlins)

23 Thursday Oct 2014

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BOB 60

BY BOB SMITH

I turned 60 on Monday, September 29 — just three weeks ago. I didn’t write about it right away because I thought it was no big deal — at least that’s what I told myself. But in retrospect, I didn’t write about it right away because, at some level, it bothers me a lot.

Happily, there was no big party to mark the “milestone” birthday. I’d made it clear to Maria that I didn’t want any elaborate celebration, so we had a nice quiet dinner and an ice cream cake at home. I got some nice gifts — money to put toward a 12-string guitar, a gift card to my new favorite bait and tackle store in Florida, and a nice cotton tropical-weight sweater.

There was only one jokey, old-guy gift: a mug with the legend on the outside, “I’M SORRY YOU’RE OLD,” and inside the rim, as you raise it to your lips, you see the words, “THAT’S ALL.” Better than the basket of Depends, M&M’s masquerading as Viagra, laxatives and antacids I’d seen other 60 year olds get on their birthdays.

There was also a greeting card showing a man (presumably me) reclining on a chair atop a high bluff with a small dog at his side. He’s dangling his fishing line in the water below, happily oblivious to the fact that he’s about to hook into a fish longer than the man himself. The dark part of me whispered that this could be a bright metaphor for something horrific — it’s the universe telling you, via a plastic fish decal on a Hallmark card, that you’ll be very sorry you put off that colonoscopy.

“You won’t be the little guy smiling on the boat much longer when you reel in that bad news,” said the gremlin, laughing. “At your age anything’s possible.”

The happy side of me: “At any age anything’s possible; you never know.”

Gremlin: “But at ‘your age,’ lots of bad things are a lot more likely than they used to be.”

Tough to argue with that …

For some reason, the arithmetic in your 60s feels fundamentally different than in your 50s. Then (a mere three weeks ago), being really old (which in my mind means in your 80s) was 30 years away, more or less. Now it’s only 20 years.

That’s scary in itself because time telescopes so much as you age. The distance from 20 to 40 was huge — I turned from a kid with no direction or shape to my life into a lawyer with a career, and a young family, and a house in the suburbs. From 40 to 60 was a radical evolution too — the kids grew up, left home (mostly), we acquired a vacation condo in Florida as the southern counterpart to our house at the Jersey Shore, and I retired.

But both of those significant chunks of my life, in retrospect, flew past in the blink of an old guy’s eye, to paraphrase Bruce. What major changes do the next 20 years hold (if you’ve even got 20 more in you, whispers the gremlin)? Who knows?

What worries me more is how quickly, in retrospect, will they have passed? But the happy side of me ultimately prevails: worrying about the view, in retrospect, is living ass-backwards. Look ahead, live in the moment, and barrel forward with gusto.

Drive this car as if you’d stolen it. And it you fly headlong off a cliff, with the gremlin shouting, “I told you so!” as you fall, at least you’ll have had a hell of a good time.

Circus Drive-In Clown Not a Sign of the Times

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

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Circus

BY BOB SMITH

There’s a clown on Rt. 35, just south of Belmar. He leers over the top of the Circus Drive-In sign with its Broadway-lit letters and neon-highlighted arrow pointing to the parking lot. But this is a sad day for the clown because, as the announcement board reads, “SUNDAY SEPT 7 LAST DAY OF THE SEASON.”

The Circus Drive-In opened in 1954 and, although the building appears to be well-maintained, its style is dated. Its circular roof has wide red and white stripes that hang over the facade so the whole place resembles a big-top tent. Cutout clowns, along with female performers that appear to be acrobats, stand hand in hand on the roof.circus 3

A metal awning with the tent motif stretches out from the right side of the main building, providing covered parking for maybe a dozen cars. A sign on top proudly proclaims “WEATHER-PROOFED CURB SERVICE,” meaning they bring the food to you right there in your car so you can eat without ever having to set foot in the Circus itself. You can even buy souvenir t-shirts bearing an image of the iconic sign and the restaurant’s slogan, “I’M WITH THE CLOWN” (which your spouse may or may not appreciate).circus 2

The menu, as you might expect from the décor, is heavily laced with cheese-laden appetizers, steaks, ribs, chicken, burgers, dogs, battered fish platters, and five varieties of French Fries. Oh sure they have salads, but eating green is clearly not what the clown is about. If you’re with the clown, you’re gonna eat grease.

I pulled in last Friday afternoon, just two days before lights out, but I couldn’t bring myself to order any food. It’s not that I wasn’t hungry, and I’m not averse to the occasional artery-busting plateful of mouth-watering, deep-fried everything. But, senseless as it seems, because the Circus opened the same year I was born, I felt somehow responsible for it, as if I had conceived of its garish style and approved its throwback menu selections.

I was embarrassed to be there.

1954 was the height of the post-war baby boom, and most people in the U.S. were feeling optimistic about the future. Good jobs were plentiful. Gasoline cost about a quarter a gallon, and you could buy a brand new Ford for less than $2,000. Cigarettes, not considered harmful at all, were still promoted in magazines and on billboards with ads featuring images of doctors and babies – even Santa Claus.

The Circus Drive-In must have been a pretty cool place to idle in your shiny metal machine, unfiltered Camel dangling from your mouth, waiting for your double cheeseburger, shake, and fries. The Clown’s gleeful smile must have felt exactly right for the times.

But look what’s happened since: assassinations, suicide bombings, terrorists beheading journalists, war after war after bloody “police action,” natural disasters, exotic diseases, overflowing jails – the list of modern ills is as expansive as the country’s 1950’s dreams. The Clown’s smile today feels forced; almost cynical. The Circus Drive-In’s season may have just closed on September 7, but the season of our optimism from which it sprang ended, sadly, many years ago.
circus 4

Does Everything Happen for a Reason?

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Even Facebook believes EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

Even Facebook believes ‘EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.’

BY BOB SMITH

People always say: “Everything happens for a reason.” Usually with a knowing wink, as if there’s mysterious meaning behind it. As if some greater being or force has determined the proper sequence and nature of everything that happens on earth, and makes things happen to fit that grand scheme.

But it isn’t so. It’s really just causation, dressed up as having meaning.

Say you’re sitting at your desk and a pencil rolls off a shelf, falls onto your old address book (yes, the paper kind, which people kept before the advent of the electronic calendar), and lands pointing directly to a listing for your elderly aunt. This seems to be a truly random event, particularly if your desk is an unholy mess like mine. When you notice the pencil apparently pointing in the general direction of this particular listing, you recall that this elderly aunt had recently been ill, so you call and wish her well. Tragically, she dies four hours later.

You later mention that the circumstance of the pencil having fallen was what prompted your call to ailing auntie, and someone immediately wants to ascribe the event to divine intervention. You get the knowing wink and the conspiratorial nod – “Everything happens for a reason.”

Yup-gravity.

Calling it a divine act seems to bring order and reason to what would otherwise be random chaos; mere coincidence, but that’s all it was. Saying everything happens for a reason is really just an extension of Ecclesiastes 3 (remember the song “Turn Turn Turn” by the Byrds – a time to be born a time to die, etc.?). “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.” Maybe.

Or maybe things just happen because that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Time goes by and cells get tired and maybe you breathe more radon than you should have, and a bunch of lung cells multiply madly, grow into a tumor, metastasize, travel to everywhere in your body, and your life is over. If you’re 80 something, the conclusion will be “he lived a full life,” but “it was his time.” If you’re 30 the prevailing wisdom will be “he had his whole life ahead of him,” but again – obviously – “it was his time.” And then when the thirty year old’s widow meets and marries a billionaire six months later, the conclusion will be “everything happens for a reason.”

It is what it is.

This is another favorite of the casual (causal?) philosopher, and like the Ecclesiastes conclusion, it’s irrefutable. “It” must be an object of some kind; therefore it exists and “is.” Whatever “it” is, that is its identity, and therefore it is “what” it is. So to say “it is what it is,” is simply to recognize reality: things exist, with their own identities, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That last part is implied. When you say “it is what it is,” you’re really saying “it’s reality; you can’t do anything about it; shut up and accept it.”

Which brings us to a related platitude: “let go and let God.” This follows naturally from “it is what it is”: because if you can’t affect the reality of things, you might as well just accept them (“let go”), and let the universe have its way with them, as it will in any event (“let God”). Whether there’s a divine being up in the sky pulling the strings on this marionette show, or whether everything that happens is dictated by the course of nature, or whether it’s all just random madness, these sayings seem to foster comfort and acceptance. And at this stage of my life, those are good things regardless of the source.

So go ahead – recite them on any occasion, either alone or in sequence, and they’ll make as much sense as anyone needs to ascribe to them.

“Hey, everything happens for a reason.”
“It is what it is.”
“Let go and let God.”

AMEN!

Hanging On to (And Finally Letting Go of) the Chooba Diamond

19 Tuesday Aug 2014

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Originally published on December 5, 2012:

the chooba diamond- drawing by Julie Seyler

A Little Chooba Diamond on Her Hand.
Drawing by Julie Seyler

BY BOB SMITH

Have you ever heard of the Chooba diamond? I invented it when I was 11.
In 1965, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had a pretty big hit on pop radio with a song called, “Let’s Hang On.” It’s a bouncy anthem about love gone wrong featuring Valli’s powerful falsetto, and one of the verses begins like this:

That little chip of diamond on your hand
Ain’t a fortune baby but you know it stands
For the love (A love to tie and bind ya)
Such a love (We just can’t leave behind us) …

The chorus exhorts the girlfriend to:

Hang on to what we’ve got
Don’t let go girl, we got a lot
Got a lotta love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on
To what we’ve got.”

Somehow, I misunderstood the first line of that verse.  I thought Frankie said, “that little Chooba diamond on your hand,” instead of “chip of:”

I’d had zero experience with diamonds (or engagement rings, or girls, for that matter), so I  assumed Chooba was a designation of origin for a rare type of diamond unknown to me.  The “ain’t a fortune baby” line made sense because he did say “little,” after all.  So in my quaint understanding, Frankie had purchased an engagement ring for his girl set with a minuscule, but nonetheless highly-prized and mysterious, “Chooba diamond.”

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Breaking News: Robin Williams’s Death Not Worthy of TV Interruption

13 Wednesday Aug 2014

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rwilliams3BY BOB SMITH

Last night we were on the couch watching TV. Alex Trebek had just announced the close of the initial Jeopardy round, when the network news logo suddenly flashed across the screen, accompanied by blasts of militaristic brass music and marching drums, and the words “SPECIAL REPORT” in red capital letters:

“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this Special Report from ABC News,” said the announcer, as my heart upticked in anticipation.

Has one of the local wars around the world blossomed into a nuclear holocaust?

Has an assassin’s bullet found the president?

Is a major U.S. city a smoldering ruin thanks to a terrorist attack?

Involuntarily, my mind reeled back to that November afternoon more than 50 years ago, when TV brought us the stunning news that President Kennedy had been shot dead in Dallas. What new calamity could this be?

None of the above – a celebrity had died.

The announcer, a square-jawed 20-something guy in a somber suit and serious demeanor, stared reassuringly into the camera. His hair was piled high on his head – dense, yet richly textured – like a freshly-baked chocolate souffle.

“ABC News has learned that Robin Williams is dead,” he said. “The gifted comedian and actor, 63, was found at his Northern California home earlier today. He appears to have died of asphyxia but authorities have not confirmed that, or any further details on the circumstances of his death at this time.”

He went on to note Williams’s brilliant comic talent, his long and varied TV and movie career, and the fact that he had long struggled with drug and alcohol addictions and severe depression. The report concluded after two minutes with the announcer promising “further details as this shocking and saddening story unfolds.”

Really?

Look, I loved and admired Robin Williams as much as the next guy. It seems anyone with a glimmering of talent today is called a genius, but he was the real thing – a comic tsunami, a dead-on, rapid-fire impressionist with both precision timing, and wickedly hilarious things to say. Loved him.

But have we really become so frivolous as a society that the death of a comic actor – even a transcendently talented one like Robin Williams – is considered breaking news that merits stop-the-world treatment? Has Entertainment Tonight hijacked the news?

No disrespect to Robin, but except for his immediate family and friends, I don’t think any of us will recount, decades from now, exactly where we were and what we were doing when we learned of his passing.

We interrupt this blog to bring you a special report: Mrs. O’Toole’s cat is up a tree again. The fire department is on the scene with a ladder truck trying to effect the rescue. Now back to our regularly scheduled (escapist) programming.

My Kind of Jeopardy: Geriatric

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Trebek Bob

BY BOB SMITH

Lately, we’ve been watching Jeopardy almost every night. It’s broadcast every weekday at 7 p.m., but we program the DVR to record it so we don’t have to watch any commercials. This has the added benefit of skipping a couple of days and then go on a mini Jeopardy binge – watching two or three shows in one evening. Modern technology can be a great thing.

I can’t recall having watched the show regularly when I was younger, so I’m not sure if I could ever have gotten all, or even most of the answers correct. But it’s clear there would be one of two results if I were to get on the show today:
a) I’d end up with zero dollars because I’d never figure out exactly how and when to push the button on the “signaling device.”
b) I’d somehow master the signaling device, but I’d answer so many questions wrong I’d end the show in negative numbers.

The last episode we watched was part of the Teen Tournament, in which the three contestants were in 7th, 9th, and 11th grades, which makes me at least 10 years older than their combined ages. The winner was the 7th grader, a bespectacled boy wearing his Dad’s best tie bunched up in a lumpy knot. The kid had barely begun puberty, but when “HE WAS PRESIDENT DURING THE WAR OF 1812,” flashed up on the screen, he promptly buzzed in and correctly replied “Who is James Madison?”

Alex Trebek always talks briefly with the contestants about an interesting fact from their lives. This 7th grader told the story of how, during his first confession (what – four years ago?), the priest had addressed the assembled prospective penitents before taking them aside individually to hear their sins. Once the priest’s speech was done, this lad was first in the confessional booth.
However, the priest forgot to disengage his lapel microphone before settling down in the confessional, so this kid’s entire first confession was broadcast to his, no doubt, delighted classmates waiting in the pews outside.

Which normally would be a pretty embarrassing event, but as Alex Trebek observed:
“And they heard everything? But this was your first confession, right? So how bad could it be?”

I suspect he was confessing to having a secret system for cheating at Jeopardy. How else would he know about things like “MOZART’S LAST AND PERHAPS MOST POWERFUL SYMPHONY SHARES ITS NAME WITH THIS PLANET.”

My answer (a wild guess, just for laughs): “What is Uranus, Alex?”

But the correct response, from the mouths of babes: “What is Jupiter?”

I certainly didn’t know that in 7th grade. In fact, I wasn’t aware of it until yesterday. And there’s a pretty good chance, given the way my memory is drying up, that I won’t know it next year either. Or even tomorrow.

The kid won more than $19,000, and qualified to compete in the quarterfinals of the tournament against other freakishly knowledgeable teenagers. I’ll watch, and try to keep up with them, but I don’t have much hope with categories like “NEW TESTAMENT GEOGRAPHY;” “PHYSICS;” and “KATY PERRY VIDEOS” on the board.

I might fare better if they had Geriatric Jeopardy with categories like “PAIN RELIEVERS;” “FLORIDA GOLF;” “SINATRA SONGS;” “NEW HIPS;” “OLD HIPPIES.” There’d be a pee break before Final Jeopardy, and if you’re lucky, you’d get to say “Make it a true Daily Double Knee Replacement, Alex.”

Oh yeah, that’s my kind of game.

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To Flu Shot or Not?

14 Monday Jul 2014

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Do I really want to bypass my annual flu shot?

Do I really want to bypass my annual flu shot?

BY BOB SMITH

Having recently moved to Monmouth County, I’ve switched my regular doctor to a local guy recommended by a neighbor. Now that I’m almost 60, he wants to see me every six months, specifically to monitor the effectiveness of my cholesterol medication, and generally to be sure I haven’t started on a catastrophic decline that, in retrospect, could have been prevented if only he’d seen me sooner.

Sounds like a revenue-generating plan to me. But what the hell – I figure it can’t hurt, and each visit only costs me a $25 copay.

As I sat on the examining table the other day getting palpated and peppered with probing questions about my sleep, eating and bowel habits, I noticed a sign taped to the wall reminding patients about getting flu shots. The last time I had the flu I was laid up for five days feeling weak and sore from head to toe, as if someone had beaten me with a sock full of lead marbles. I sipped warm ginger ale to try to replace the fluids lost in my periodic trips to the bathroom, and whenever I wasn’t moaning or babbling through a fevered fog, I fervently prayed for death.

Then, about 10 years ago, I started getting an annual flu shot. That was when Maria’s grandmother lived with us, and we thought it was better if everyone in the house got vaccinated. I haven’t had a touch of flu since then, so although Grandma moved on years ago, I’ve continued to get the shot each year.

“I need that, right?” I suggested, nodding at the sign, expecting an enthusiastic, “Yes.”

“Why?” he smiled, peering at me over his reading glasses. “You’re not elderly, your immune system isn’t compromised, and you don’t have any chronic respiratory problems. You don’t need it.”

His explained his rationale that the flu vaccine gives you six months of immunity from getting the three most popular strains of flu that experts believe are likely to circle the globe this season. If you come across a different strain (there are thousands of them), or if you encounter one of this season’s three popular strains outside that short window of protection, you get the flu anyway.

But his most persuasive argument was for building your own lifetime immunity:

If an otherwise healthy adult gets the flu, it’s unlikely to be deadly. Granted, you’re miserable for a few days, but you’ll never get that flu again because your body generates lifetime immunity to that strain and its close cousins. Fast forward to when you’re 82 or whatever – you’re elderly so now you should be getting an annual flu vaccine, but what if you come across a strain from years ago that’s now fallen out of the top three? Maybe it’s number 6 or 7 on the flu hit parade, so the current vaccine doesn’t cover it. If you’ve already had that flu, or a similar flu, you’ve still got natural immunity and you won’t get sick. But if not, you’re in trouble because now you’re gonna get it when you’re too old to handle it.

In his view, it’s better to get sick now, maybe even every year, to build up that immunity. But what about all the hype around flu shots, and this notion that everyone should get them? According to my doc, one or more influential people at the CDC conveniently used to work for companies that are heavily invested in making those vaccines:

By the way, only about 30% of the population gets vaccinated – if the flu is such a scourge, why aren’t the other 70% dying in droves from it every year? They’re not because it isn’t. About the same number of people die every year from the flu, and it’s the same people from the known risk groups, regardless of the vaccination levels in the population.

“Your choice,” he smiled. “Come back in November and I’ll give it to you if you want it.”

So now I’m undecided – do I get the flu shot, and cruise through another winter, reasonably confident that my life won’t be interrupted by a week or more of miserable symptoms? Or do I take my new doctor’s advice and leave open the chance of getting sick so I can build up an inventory of immunities that will serve me in the old age I hope to enjoy someday?

I’m leaning toward taking my doctor’s advice, which is to “Let your body do what it was designed to do,” and go without the vaccine this flu season. It may result in some short term discomfort (a gross understatement given how nasty the flu can be), but I’m betting on the long game.

Scrabble Geeks Forever

03 Thursday Jul 2014

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When the letters suck

When the letters suck

BY BOB SMITH

Long before Words With Friends (WWF), there was its real-world ancestor Scrabble, which we’ve been playing in our family for as long as I can remember. At home we use a set with indentations that keep the letters in place, and a fancy turntable to spin the board to each player. We have one travel set we bring to the beach and another we take with us when we know we’ll be waiting on line at a restaurant for more than a half hour.

photo 3 Our paperback Scrabble Dictionary for the beach is so warped from the humid ocean air, its spine has curled into a sharp u-shape. In fact, we’re on our second beach board because the first one partially melted from years in the hot sun and wouldn’t lay flat any more. Oh yeah; we’re total Scrabble geeks.

WWF is essentially the same game except that with Scrabble, you compete against human beings who are sitting beside you, in person, rather than communicating over the Internet. In WWF the program automatically decides which words are permissible, while in Scrabble the issue is open to discussion. To settle disputes about what words are acceptable, we always use an Official Scrabble Dictionary, which features “aa,” “mu,” “za,” “ae,” and similar obscure – but handy – language fragments.

Two weeks ago Maria and I played a game on the beach to a point where neither of us could build any more words, even though we both had letters left in our racks. I passed on my turn; she passed on hers. We’d never seen it before: the Scrabble stalemate.

What would you do with this board?

What would you do with this board?

We shrugged and showed each other our letters (an interaction impossible in WWF). Mine were pretty crummy (U, R, R, E, and E), and Maria’s weren’t much better except for the high-value Z (accompanied by O, A, and I). Neither of us could come up with any words, so we declared it a tie and put the game away – but we were wrong.

Even though a stalemate is as rare as the elusive ai (a Venezuelan three-toed sloth), the Official Scrabble Rules clearly provide that if all players “pass” twice in a row, the game is over and the points must be tallied. You subtract from each player’s score the value of the tiles remaining in that person’s rack, and whoever has the highest score wins.

That person was Maria – again. She regularly beats me at WWF too, but those games are a lot less fun than our Scrabble matches, where we can squabble about the rules and whether or not a given word is acceptable. We (me, usually) grouse about having six vowels, taunt the other person for taking too much time, and share the excitement (or envy) when one of us gets a seven-letter word.

Despite its name, WWF is an impersonal electronic interaction that’s mostly about words. Scrabble, on the other hand, is all about gathering people together in the same place to match wits and share a few laughs – truly a game of words, with friends.

The Power Washer Blasts Fun

27 Friday Jun 2014

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Before and After

Before and After.

BY BOB SMITH

Last weekend our next door neighbors had a guy power washing their house, patio, and outdoor furniture. It didn’t look like a particularly glamorous chore, but it was effective: sheets of brownish water cascaded from the house, and the place virtually sparkled when he was done.

I casually asked how much the service had cost, and they told me it was $650. But then I checked pressure washer prices online at Home Depot, and found I could buy my own power washer for about $400. Because I’m now retired, I saw no reason to pay a $250 premium for a job I could readily do myself. And if I do the job every year, I’ll save that much more.

So on Monday I bought a Ryobi brand power washer with a Honda gasoline motor that pumps out 2.5 gallons of water per minute, under 3,100 hefty pounds of pressure. And I quickly discovered that it also delivers something they don’t specify on the box: tons of fun.

As boys, my brother and I had high-quality magnifying glasses we’d salvaged from a never-used science kit Mom gave us for Christmas. If you held it at just the right angle, the lens focused the sun’s rays into an intense, white-hot beam that you could use to inflict a nasty pinpoint burn on your unsuspecting brother’s arm (precipitating more than one fistfight), or to start fires in piles of dead leaves. Or you could play God.

Magnifying glasses in hand, we would go out on a hot summer day looking for ants. Not solo meandering ants, but thousands of ants in a boiling pile, massed on a melting ice pop or glob of gum stuck to the sidewalk. If you held the glass five inches above the ants and got a good focused beam going, you could sweep it slowly across the pile, instantly crisping every ant in its path. As the beam advanced, the unlucky ants would give off a minuscule wisp of smoke, then twist, wither and fall under the writhing mass of their brethren.

“It’s a death ray!” Jim laughed gleefully. “It’s a laser beam from the sky, like if a flying saucer came by right now and started zapping us!”

While it sobered us momentarily, that image didn’t abate our enthusiasm for the grisly task at hand. Ants are slightly alien anyway, and there are millions of them, so mass murder seemed appropriate. It was exhilarating and empowering – just like my new power washer.

I hooked up the water supply, filled the tank with gas, and fired it up. The motor idled, deceptively tame, until I picked up the long metal wand and pulled the plastic trigger. The engine immediately belched to a high-pitched roar, and water jetted from the end of the hose with such force that the wand recoiled, dancing in my hands.

I tried it on the narrowest setting and the needle of water promptly etched ragged quarter-inch deep lines into the artificial wood of our deck. But when I dialed it down to a wider setting and directed the pulsing spray at the vinyl fencing around our back deck, the result was miraculous. Years of dirt and green mildew that would have taken tedious hours to scrub off by hand was blown away in minutes by the power washer’s brute force.

Then I turned to the picnic table and benches, which are pressure-treated wood that I’ve never bothered to stain or varnish in the decade we’ve owned them. The salesman rightly said you didn’t have to because the wood, even unfinished, doesn’t rot like untreated wood. But it does become “weathered” over time, which means (thanks to the rampant growth of all forms of mold), it turns from its original cinnamon brown to an ugly, blotchy black/greenish gray.

Enter the power washer – wand of watery death for mold spores living on wood.

If I set the spray width just right and held the wand close enough to the surface, I could blast paths of greenish mold off the wood with a single pass. Once again, I held incredible power in my hands.

Only no ants or other potentially sentient creatures were injured or killed this time around (unless you consider mold spores intelligent life). Giddy with power, I sprayed every square inch of every bench; every table; every piece of grimy vinyl in the yard. I even cleaned the concrete sidewalks.

It was great being a boy again.

Hello Thumb Pain, Goodbye Guitar

13 Friday Jun 2014

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Immobilized Thumb

Immobilized Thumb

BY BOB SMITH

When I retired in October, I resolved to do everything I hadn’t had time to do while working – including studying guitar so I’d become a better hack guitarist than I am now. I started lessons in mid-December and was practicing for an hour every day. It was great – my skills improved steadily.

But after a month I developed persistent pain at the base of my left thumb, and my doctor prescribed an analgesic cream. Three times a day for weeks, as directed, I applied the cream religiously (every time I put it on I muttered “this Goddamn stuff better work”), but to no avail – the pain remained. Next stop – the hand specialist.

He examined my x rays and promptly diagnosed arthritis, which means there’s no more cartilage in the joint between my thumb and my wrist. He said he could give me a cortisone shot to relieve the pain, and if necessary do surgery to replace the cartilage. I said I’d heard repeated cortisone shots could damage the joint.

“That’s why we’re going to start conservatively – wear a brace for six weeks and then we’ll see where we are,” he recited, scribbling indecipherable notes.

He told the nurse to get me a wrist brace and schedule a follow-up. Then he leaned in with his best dead-on empathetic look (do they teach that in medical school?), firmly shook my hand (the right, which isn’t hurting yet), and left. Examination over.

As the nurse showed me how to wrap the brace around my thumb and wrist, she explained that it should reduce the inflammation and pain by immobilizing the joint. I should wear it all day, every day, if possible.

“What happens when I take the brace off and start moving the joint around?” I asked. “If it’s arthritis and there’s no cartilage there, won’t it just start hurting all over again?”

“Let’s see where we are after the six weeks, okay?” she said, followed by the nurse version of the sincere sign-off: she handed me my file, told me to pay any copay at the desk, and scurried away.

Both she and the doctor had given me the same sketchy prognosis: “wait and see.” In other words, they didn’t know if the brace would help, but felt it was worth a try before they started jabbing me with painful needles of dubious long-term efficacy, or slicing into and reconstructing the joint itself. Let’s face it – the doctor’s office is called “Hand Surgery Associates,” so I’ve got some inkling of what the ultimate recommendation is likely to be. Reducing inflammation is probably the normal first step in the process.

I’ve been wearing the brace every day, with the same religious fervor I brought to the analgesic cream routine, and the pain’s been reduced – no surprise, because with the brace on you can’t rotate your thumb at all. But it isn’t gone, and I’m sure it’ll return in full force once I stop wearing the damn thing. And because of the pain, I haven’t played guitar for five months and counting.

Remember the nerdy bookworm played by Burgess Meredith in that old Twilight Zone episode? He was a ravenous reader, but his dead end job as a bank clerk and his overbearing wife had combined to prevent him from curling up with all the great books he wanted to read. Then the world ends in a mass cataclysm, and he finds himself the sole survivor in a ruined city.

He comes upon mountains of books in the rubble that was once the public library, and settles down to finally read to his heart’s content – for days; weeks; the rest of his life – he’s thrilled. But he falters as he bends down to pick up the first book and his Coke-bottle glasses fall off, shattering on the hard concrete. He can’t see his hand in front of him, much less read a book.

The episode ends with him sitting amid a sea of books, moaning miserably.
“That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. There was time now. There was all the time I needed! That’s not fair!”

I know just how he feels.